ArcaMax

Sen. Al Franken has a new book out humbly titled "Al Franken: Giant of the Senate." On that same level of attempted humor, his biography states he received "his doctorate in right-wing megalomania studies from Trump University." Stay classy, Sen. Franken.

Sycophantic press profiles of Franken express admiration for the "former comedian" as if ...Read more

The first question you have to wonder about concerning the assault and battery allegedly committed by Montana congressional candidate Greg Gianforte is: How could he possibly have put out a miserable, lying cover story when there were at least four witnesses in the room? The second question is: Do you regret early voting yet?

Here's the account...Read more

On Sept. 1, 1864, Union forces under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, victorious at Jonesborough, burned Atlanta and began the March to the Sea where Sherman's troops looted and pillaged farms and towns all along the 300-mile road to Savannah.

Captured in the Confederate defeat at Jonesborough was William Martin Buchanan of Okolona, Mississippi, ...Read more

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict."

-- Irving Kristol

WASHINGTON -- The quixotic American pursuit of Middle East peace is a perennial. It invariably fails, yet every administration feels compelled to give it a try. The Trump administration is no different.

It will fail as well. To be ...Read more

What a difference a week makes. On May 19, President Donald Trump took off in Air Force One for the Middle East and Europe. He left behind a Washington and a nation buzzing about his firing of FBI Director James Comey, the multiple reasons he had given for doing so, the meeting he'd had with the Russian foreign minister a day later and his ...Read more

Trusting Saudi Arabia to combat terrorists and extremists and "drive them out," as President Trump called on the kingdom and other Arab and Muslim nations to do in his Riyadh speech, is akin to forging an alliance with the <...Read more

ATLANTA -- By the time Georgia's 6th District votes in the June 20 special congressional election, $40 million -- perhaps more than $130 per ballot -- will have been spent to pick one-435th of one-half of one of the three branches of one of America's governments. This is an expensive funeral for Tip O'Neill's incessantly quoted and increasingly ...Read more

For now, everyone knows the sonorous name and cherubic face of 8-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos.

She's the littlest known victim of Monday night's jihad attack in Manchester, England. Her doe-eyed image spread as rapidly across social media as the #PrayForManchester hashtags and Twitter condolences from celebrities.

But I guarantee you that ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- President Trump is an expert on some things. The North American Free Trade Agreement is not one of them.

He understands human nature better than most. He knows how we like to blame our problems on external forces, how indifferent the elites can be to working-class struggles, and the strain that immigration and trade can place on ...Read more

It was big news when Roger Ailes died. Everyone in his industry acknowledged that a serious, even transcendent force in American media and politics had passed away. Without Fox News over these last 20 years, the shape of American politics would be far different. The heretofore unanimously liberal media suddenly had a counterweight, and, much to ...Read more

Call it the political equivalent of supply-side economics: The supply of scandal in the news always rises to meet the demand. But as in the economy, inflation soon sets in and each scandal seems to have less effect on a public grown insensitive. For if everything is a scandal, then nothing is. And what's supposed to shock no longer does. ...Read more

Who is the real threat to the national security?

Is it President Trump who shared with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov the intelligence that ISIS was developing laptop bombs to put aboard airliners?

Or is it The Washington Post that ferreted out and published this code-word intelligence, and splashed the details on its front page, alerting the ...Read more

Roger Ailes was no genius, not in the league of Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. The founding chairman of Fox News Channel, who died last week from complications after suffering a fall, understood and respected Middle America from whence he came.

When the opportunity arrived to address the legitimate concerns of "flyover territory" about ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- These days, when friends ask how I'm doing, I give them an honest answer. I say, "I'm struggling."

You see, my profession is driving me crazy. I have a job that requires me to stay on top of current events and follow every bounce of the daily news cycle. Switching between CNN and Fox News is like visiting different planets. Between...Read more

WASHINGTON -- A blind spider creeping through America's judicial thicket might be heading to the Supreme Court, which will have to decide if the contentment or even the survival of the Bone Cave Harvestman spider species, which lives only in two central Texas counties, is any of the federal government's business. If it is, what isn't?

The U.S. ...Read more

In January, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey told a Television Critics Association session in Hollywood that she wanted to retool ABC programming to include more shows for Trump-voting segments of the population: men, rural America and working-class families.

"If we're talking about diversity and inclusion, I want to make sure we're ...Read more

"Hate is a more powerful motivator than love." According to the new Netflix documentary "Get Me Roger Stone," that is one of the "rules" the self-described Republican "agent provocateur" has lived by. Stone, of course, is a showman. The "evil political operator" pose is to some degree an artifice -- a brand he's selling. Still, his style of ...Read more

"With the stroke of a pen, Rod Rosenstein redeemed his reputation," writes Dana Milbank of The Washington Post.

What had Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein done to be welcomed home by the Post like the prodigal son?

Without consulting the White House, he sandbagged President Trump, naming a special counsel to take over the investigation of the...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The pleasant surprise of the First 100 Days is over. The action was hectic, heated, often confused, but well within the bounds of normalcy. Policy (e.g., health care) was being hashed out, a Supreme Court nominee confirmed, foreign policy challenges (e.g. North Korea) addressed.

Donald Trump's character -- volatile, impulsive, ...Read more

DURHAM, England -- When I first visited England to cover a British election 20 years ago this month, there were striking similarities between British and American politics.

In Britain, Tony Blair's Labour Party was about to sweep to a landslide victory after 18 years of Conservative Party government, promising a third way between the free ...Read more